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Sunday, February 26, 2017

Why Beer Won't Go the Way of Music

Forty years ago this month, I began what would end up being a seven year stint in the record business. I was in college when I started and it was the first long-term job I'd had. It was part-time for several years, then mostly full-time for the last three or so years.

Music was a commodity in those days. There was no iTunes or Amazon from which to buy music. There was no Spotify or Pandora. If you wanted a song or album, you went to the record store and bought it. Unless maybe you could borrow it from a friend to record.

In fact, record stores in those days were a lot like bottleshops. We catered to folks who enjoyed listening to music and had to buy a record or tape to do so. Today's bottleshops cater to folks who enjoy beer, which they have to physically buy and drink. Beer is very much an analog product.

I got that job at Budget Tapes & Records mainly because I spent too much time and money on records. The owner had stores in two cities and got used to seeing me in both. That's because I went to school in one city and lived in the other during summers and breaks. I never applied for a job. He asked me to work for him because he needed occasional part-time help in both stores.

The owner, Mike, was a crusty fellow. I came to like him, but a lot of store patrons didn't. Vinyl records in those days often had flaws that would cause skips. Mike loved to challenge and badger customers who felt they had purchased defective product. It wasn't a pretty sight. His nickname among local businesses was, "Bad." Not ideal.

On the other hand, Mike could be quite a character. He drove a fancy GMC van when I worked for him. One day he asked me what was different about his van. I couldn't say, didn't notice anything. It turned out he had gotten the GMC logo (in several places) changed to MCG, his initials. That to me was always funny.

He became a rabid basketball fan and developed a friendship with George Raveling, then the basketball coach at Washington State. Raveling would come into the store looking for rare stuff. We'd scurry to find it, which often meant special ordering it. We also curated the music played during pre-game warm-ups at home games.

Selling records and tapes was mostly a good gig. Ordering and inventory control was painful without computers, but selling was fun. If you've seen the documentary on Tower Records, you know how wild the business was during those years. The money, booze and drugs flowed.

Mike's life jumped the tracks at some point in the late seventies. He had opened a third store by that time. Soon he was divorced and candying up his nose. The pitfalls of rapid success, I guess. Several years later, he was arrested for running coke and wound up doing a stint in prison.

Around that time the record business was transitioning to digital. Compact Discs cost several times as much as vinyl in those days. Many small stores didn't have the money to play that game. Mike's stores eventually folded or were sold. Stores that survived the transition generally enjoyed good times through the nineties, as consumers converted collections to CD.

Of course, it would all come tumbling down. For all its promise, digital turned out to be box office poison for the record industry. Consumers, miffed for years by high prices, happily discovered CDs could be converted to compressed files and easily shared. The industry, long dependent on selling a commodity, collapsed.

A similar outcome isn't likely with beer, which can't be digitized. Beer will remain a commodity until someone figures out how to reduce it to a pill or computer file. That probably won't happen anytime soon, good news for the owners of beer bars and for people who like to drink beer.

Closing the loop on my story, I recently learned that my old friend and boss passed away several years ago. He had straightened up, evidently, and drove a bus for the local transit system for years. I can easily picture him driving a bus around and chatting with riders. He had the gift of gab.

We shared good times and plenty of shitty beers. Thanks for the indelible memories, Mr. Gaede.

1 comment:

Thank you so much for the post.You bring back me a old days.Really indelible memories!There is the huge difference between current days and old days.I really enjoyed to read your article and I appreciate ting your great work.best essay writing service